Christmas music and art

Guilford- Friends of Music at Guilford presents “Joyeux Noël,” its 46th Christmas at Christ Church program, at 7:30 pm on Friday, December 7, and again at 4 pm on Saturday, December 8. Traditional elements of this event include vocal and instrumental music of the season, an entertaining story with a holiday or winter theme, and a short carol sing.
For this year’s musical program, the sixteen-voice Guilford Chamber Singers perform five traditional French carols and Francis Poulenc’s Quatre Motets pour la saison de Noël (Four Christmas Motets), composed in 1952 and inspired by four scenes from the Nativity story. While the carols are sung in their original tongue, Poulenc set his motets to texts in Latin.
Led by Tom Baehr for a seventh season, the singers include sopranos Catie G. Berg, Christina Gibbons, Jenny Holan, and Elizabeth Lewis; altos Sarah Lott, Beth McKinney, Laurie Schneski, and Joy Wallens-Penford; tenors Steven John, Bill Johnson, Hal Kuhns, and Peter Tracy; and basses Peter Abell, Orion Barber, Calvin Farwell, and Tom Green. Instrumental interludes from the French repertoire are provided by a few Guilford Chamber Players.
The program’s dramatic reading, performed as usual by FOMAG founder Don McLean, is “Alone,” a new winter story by Guilford author Mimi Morton. Everyone then joins in on a few seasonal carols before heading away into the night as the Christ Church bell tolls across Algiers Village.
Door donations at these performances are divided between FOMAG and the Christ Church Guilford Society, a nonprofit that oversees the building’s preservation and manages its special-event use. Consecrated in 1818 as the first Episcopal church in Vermont, Christ Church has not had an active congregation since the early 1890s.
For further information contact the Friends of Music office at (802) 254-3600 or office@fomag.org. Visit online at www.fomag.org.